Bernard Madoffâs son Mark was found dead in his SoHo apartment this morning, police sources said.

Officers were called to 158 Mercer Street around 7:30 a.m. to respond to a report that Mark Madoff was hanging in his apartment.

The younger Madoff, 46, was found by his father-in-law. With him in the apartment was his 2-year-old child, said sources.

Police sources said Madoff was hanging from a dog collar attached to a pipe in the apartment ceiling.

Mark and his brother Andrew Madoff's attorney, Martin Flumenbaum of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, released the following statement this morning:

âMark Madoff took his own life today. This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. Mark was an innocent victim of his fatherâs monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo. We are all deeply saddened by this shocking turn of events.â

Mark Madoff had recently traded e-mails with his wife, Stephanie, who is now in Florida with the coupleâs 4-year-old child, sources told The Post.

Stephanie Madoff, worried, sent her father-in-law to the familyâs apartment, where he made the gruesome discovery, said police sources.

The content of the e-mails is unknown, and no note was found with his body, said police sources.
Today is the two-year anniversary of Bernard Madoffâs arrest. Heâs now serving a 150-year prison sentence over his $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

Mark Madoff was "unalterably bitter" over his fatherâs decades-long deception, a spokesman told the Wall Street Journal recently.
Mark Madoff and Andrew were sued this week by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee recovering assets for the Bernard Madoffâs victims.

The two brothers were brokers in their fatherâs firm, and have said repeatedly they didnât know of

I believe some of Madoff's clients were Russian Mafia types. I think Bernie stole from the wrong guys.

More...

This is true. The woman who handled the transaction was from Austria and I think went hiding or was fearing for her life, although she didn't really know what was going on.

I say there is no way the family didn't know what was going on. (unless they are absolutely not business type) They were either stupid or incredibly naive. Anybody who works in these kind of business should have at least a suspicion...

Edit: Here it is:

Source: NYTimes

VIENNA â With an aggressive style that stood out in the staid world of Austrian banking even more than her bouffant red wig, Sonja Kohn made few friends gathering billions for Bernard L. Madoff from wealthy investors in Russia and across Europe.

Now, she has even fewer. Mrs. Kohn has dropped out of sight, leaving the firm she founded, Bank Medici, in the hands of Austrian regulators, who took it over last week.

Embarrassment from investing heavily with Mr. Madoff could explain wanting to disappear from public view. But another theory widely repeated by those who know Mrs. Kohn is that she may be afraid of some particularly displeased investors: Russian oligarchs whose money made up a chunk of the $2.1 billion that Bank Medici invested with Mr. Madoff.

âWith Russian oligarchs as clients,â said a Viennese banker who knew Mrs. Kohn and her husband socially, âshe might have reason to be afraid.â

It was a view shared in interviews with Mrs. Kohnâs fellow bankers, former employees and other associates â from Vienna to London to Geneva to Monsey, N.Y.

As Laurence Leamer points out, not all of Bernie Madoff's victims were part of the "acquisitive community overly concerned with wealth and status" that populate the country clubs and ski slopes where Madoff's scheme was marketed by word of mouth. A great many of the victims are rumored to have connection with organized crime of one sort or another. And those people won't be very pleased with the news that the moan who was handling their money was a bigger criminal and more organized than they were.

On Madoff's likely killers:

Whatever cell he sits in, whatever corridor he walks though, and from whatever direction and whatever means, Bernard Madoff must live the rest of his life knowing that at any moment he may die.

If someone kills Bernard Madoff, it may be some job figuring out who it was. One suspect would be the Russian oligarch who six months ago tried to get his money out and when Bernie said no made threatening sounds. Or it may be the Columbia drug lords who invested a purported $300 million with the Ponzi schemer. They are not happy either.

As we pointed out yesterday, it's a testament to the strength of our civilization that Madoff is still alive. We wouldn't be surprised, however, if there are people preparing to test that strength at this very moment.

"More recently, the trustee, Irving H. Picard, filed a new lawsuit in London that named Mark Madoff, 46, along with other directors and executives of the Madoff affiliate there, Madoff Securities International, Ltd. It was aimed at recovering profits and payments the defendants received from that subsidiary, on whose board Mark Madoff served.

These lawsuits are pending, and will not necessarily be derailed by Mark Madoffâs death. Typically, the litigation would continue against the estate of any deceased defendant, as was the case when Jeffry Picower, one of Bernie Madoffâs largest investors, died in October 2009.

Mr. Madoff had worked at his fatherâs brokerage firm since his graduation from the University of Michigan in 1987. A number of Markâs oldest childhood friends from Roslyn, N.Y., invested with Madoff and lost their savings in the fraud. This destroyed those relationships and caused Mark great pain, says a person close to the family who requested anonymity."

Of course his gold digger wife jumped ship 2 years ago instead of standing by his side and supporting him. She was in Florida enjoying the beaches instead of being with her husband when he hung himself.